Author: VKM

What are the Emotional Effects of Alcohol?

Post author By VKM
Post date November 19, 2024

There is a reason that nearly 12 million women in the United States alone qualify for an alcohol use disorder. The way that alcohol affects the mind, body, and mood is addictive, generating the phenomena of craving, tolerance, and withdrawal.

But how does alcohol affect our feelings? Any woman who has wrested her life back from the octopus arms of addiction will tell you: that alcohol starts out friendly, helping us feel more social, open, and relaxed. But before too long, alcohol amplifies shame, guilt, anger, stress, trauma, depression, and anxiety. For those who don’t get out of alcoholism’s grip in time, their last days are spent in pure insanity.

Read on for Villa Kali Ma’s exploration of how alcoholism takes away a woman’s ability to feel her feelings. All the more reason to devote ourselves, once again, to the bright, true path of recovery.

What are the emotional effects of alcohol?

Here are a few of the ways that alcohol makes us feel bad.

How Alcohol Affects Women with PTSD

There is a strong connection between traumatization and addiction. The link goes in both directions; women who drink are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than women who don’t, and women who already have PTSD or complex trauma are more likely to become addicted to substances, including alcohol.

Alcohol, like all addictive substances, has a negative interaction with trauma, causing greater levels of dissociation, intensity of traumatic memory, flashbacks, and reenactment compulsion. This is because alcohol further prevents the processing and release of traumatic memories, so the distress coming from damage to survival instincts, which people with PTSD must learn how to release, is doubly locked inside the body.

How Alcohol Interacts with Stress

For the same reasons that alcohol interacts negatively with traumatic stress, it also interacts negatively with everyday life stress, such as the stress associated with parenting and work. The body’s stress processing pathways – heart, stomach, breath, and nervous system – are deteriorated by alcohol. The consequences of alcoholism also bring more stressful events into a woman’s life, in the form of legal, financial, and relationship problems.

How Alcohol Interacts with Depression

Alcohol generates depression as a side effect, even though many women also use it to self-medicate their pre-existing depression. The longer-term impact on physiology is to reduce levels of happiness and good mood, through disrupting neurotransmitter and hormone production and circulation in the body, as well as re-routing patterns of brain and nervous system functioning.

Alcohol also depletes the body of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, which are vital to the maintenance of positive mood. Alcohol gradually poisons the liver and sickens the body, such that the body’s ability to eliminate toxins is impaired.
Feeling ill in the body and having a heavy load of toxins and inflammation are both correlated with depression.

How Alcohol Interacts with Anxiety

Anxiety is a side effect of alcohol and a withdrawal symptom from alcohol. Women who turn to alcohol for its calming, relaxant, and socially lubricating effects have to eventually face the reverse impact when the body no longer has enough of the substance to recreate the effect.

The pattern of chronic anxiety is deepened through the repetitive use of alcohol, and alcohol gets in the way of the body’s ability to find nervous system healing through positive methods like exercise, nutrition, and meditation.

How Alcohol Interacts with Anger

We need boundaries that protect ourselves and others, and healthy anger can be part of recognizing a boundary. A temporary emotional state of anger can be used as a signal to take action to protect ourselves and other vulnerable who are counting on us to defend them, such as our children or pets.

Rage, on the other hand, is out of control, explosive anger that hurts ourselves and others. Rage is not helpful for resolving conflicts or getting our needs addressed. Rage is adversely affected by alcohol abuse. Women who abuse alcohol gradually become more and more rageful over time.

How Alcohol Affects a Woman’s Self-Esteem

Alcohol reinforces shame severely. Shame is the feeling that you don’t deserve to be loved or to belong in the group. It is one of the most difficult emotions to endure.

When you’re already depressed, angry, and anxious, the chronic and relentless shame that people with addiction feel can be a killer. Many women with substance use disorders take their own lives.

There is a stigma associated with addiction, and the life consequences of alcoholism, such as health problems, physical ravages, job loss, financial trouble, DUIs, loss of custody, and so on, are also stigmatized.

How Alcohol Affects Social Interactions

Alcoholism leads to social isolation. Due to the changes in personality that take place with alcoholism, sober people and moderate drinkers don’t want to be around us and we don’t want to be around them. It is hard for caring people to witness our self-destruction and not be able to do anything about it. All of these reasons, and more, lead to a loss of family, friends, and social belonging.

How Alcohol Affects Intimate Relationships

Alcohol corrodes intimacy. In addition to psychological impacts that generate more rage, stress, depression, and anxiety, alcoholics make bad choices, bringing on financial and legal trouble.

Alcohol is linked to domestic violence (for victims too), emotional volatility, fights, and reckless behavior, like crashing cars, infidelity, and spending sprees. People who love us may eventually leave for their own well-being. The people who stay with us get sick with codependency, which harms them considerably.

How does alcohol affect the human brain?

Alcohol is first absorbed into the blood and then transmitted to the brain. Once in the brain, alcohol affects our supply of neurotransmitters and hormones. These tiny chemical messengers are involved in regulating and balancing all vital systems. The connection between alcohol and menopause is particularly significant because hormonal fluctuations during menopause can amplify the effects of alcohol on neurotransmitters and overall mental health.

If we do not have enough of the right kinds of these molecules, many pathways are disrupted and thrown out of whack. Some neurotransmitters which are known to be disturbed by alcohol are GABA, serotonin, and dopamine.

A very simplified analogy for thinking about this is: that alcohol breaks into the storehouse of neurotransmitters and releases them artificially, thereby cheating the system and spending them when we haven’t yet earned them.

An alcohol-induced GABA spike creates sedation, and a release of concentrated dopamine feels like pleasure. Sedation and pleasure are addictive, leading us to want to drink alcohol again and again. When the physical toxicity and negative emotional impacts of alcohol kick in, we are liable to want that borrowed pleasure and sedation even more.

The problem with breaking into the storehouse is that the required levels of these transmitters are gone when we need them for other bodily operations.

These molecules are supposed to be used for operating the body, as well as for natural reward and relaxation processes. They are ordinarily released as a cascade when we are doing life-affirming activities: after exercise, sleep, emotional connection, creativity, and procreation. Normally, we would feel pleasure as a reward for behavior that is good for life (our own and other people’s).

For example, the natural pleasure that a mother and her baby feel when a mother is nursing her newborn, or that two people feel when falling in love, or which a grandmother feels while gardening in the sun, are hormonal and neurotransmitter cascades saying “yes, this is good for you”.

If we deplete our supply of biological reward hormones and neurotransmitters through using drugs and alcohol, we eventually aren’t able to feel enjoyment naturally anymore. This can all be restored through a life of recovery, but it takes some time to replenish after addiction.

What influences alcohol’s impact on your brain?

How much influence alcohol will have on your brain depends on how much exposure you have had. The amount of alcohol you drink, how often you drink, how old you were when you began drinking, and for how many years total you have been drinking, are all predictors of how much impact alcohol will have on your brain. More alcohol over the same period of time means more impact. Also, the earlier in your development you start using alcohol, the greater the impact.

Another factor to consider is your baseline physical and mental health. If you have a physical or mental illness, then alcohol has a greater impact on you.

What parts of the brain does alcohol affect?

Alcohol affects multiple centers in the brain that are connected to mood, motor control, thought, sensation, and decisions.

Alcohol inhibits some brain functions and stimulates other functions. The frontal lobe, which moderates aggressive behavior, helps us make rational decisions and overrides impulsive urges, is inhibited by alcohol and can be damaged.

Alcohol also stimulates the limbic system, explaining why it can make people feel happy, affectionate, and connected in the short term, but also why sadness and other more difficult emotions exist in abundance in alcoholics.

Alcohol-related brain damage in women

In recent decades the impact of chronic alcohol abuse on the brain has been studied more closely. Brain imaging reveals what appear to be areas of damage in the brains of alcoholics, in key centers related to emotion. These areas of brain damage corroborate the already observable phenomena of extreme mood swings and out-of-control behavior in alcoholics.

Women are more at risk of alcohol-related brain damage than men, due to our physiological differences. We are also more prone to experiencing blackouts, which harm short and long-term memory, showing up as shrinkage in function-specific centers of the brain. What this generally means for women is chronic problems with anxiety, depression, and anger, as well as difficulty with memory and decisions.

How does alcohol affect your mental health?

Mental health is deeply disrupted by alcohol. For people who have no pre-existing mental health problems, alcoholism instills them, bringing on depression, anxiety, and in later stages, psychosis. For people who have a pre-existing or co-occurring mental health problem, including trauma-related disorders, alcohol makes these worse, deepening them and interfering with healing them.

People with severe and chronic mental health problems, such as bipolar disorder and major depression, often use alcohol to self-medicate, but its impact is very destructive in the long run, aggravating both mania and depression.

Overcome the emotional effects of alcohol today!

When our emotions are working as nature intended, we have vivid, active hearts. Our emotions guide and comfort us. When joy comes, we feel it fully. We can also tolerate and pass through the tenderness of sorrow. We play the full, grand piano range of emotional notes.

All that makes life worth living, is recognized by how it feels. Alcohol takes this birthright from us. It darkens our hearts.

Through sobriety, it’s possible to start over. Villa Kali Ma is a unique, women-only holistic treatment provider, specializing in recovery from addiction, co-occurring mental health disorders, and/or trauma. If you’re looking to recover your right to feel good in your own heart, body, and mind, we’d love to work with you!

References:

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-use-disorder-aud-united-states-age-groups-and-demographic-characteristics

Tags emotional effects of alcohol

Alcohol Addiction

The Connection Between Menopause and Alcohol

Post author By VKM
Post date November 19, 2024

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we celebrate women in every way. We love women fully, without any shade of reservation, as we are now.

Our love for women embraces many stages of life that all women pass through. One such stage of life is menopause, the window of development during which we turn from grown-ups into wisdom-keeping elders.

The present wider culture is stingy with its love for women. Its main attitude towards menopause is to trivialize it, pathologize it, or tease us about the messiness the process requires.

But we do not have to follow the cues of the wider culture, do we? We do not. Let us make our own music from the rhythms and harmonies we discover at play in our own lives, in the lives of women.

In a spirit of loving celebration of our maturing process, here is Villa Kali Ma’s guide to menopause, as it relates to our core topics of addiction, mental illness, and healing.

What is the connection between menopause and alcohol?

Menopause is achieved in the body through the operations of hormones, those indescribably tiny units of electrochemically alive substances that have such a big role in the body.

Alcohol is known to interfere with the natural health and operations of hormones, especially for women, who are more vulnerable biologically to alcohol’s many effects than men. Alcohol wipes out precious stores of needed hormones, makes others inert, causes some to be produced in overabundance, and so on.

When alcohol is relied upon for coping with the choppy waves of emotion that come with menopause, we get pulled into a trap, wherein we are always chasing, and never quite finding, a place of pause between hormonal swells.

If you, or someone you love, is getting entangled in the alcohol trap during menopause, you are not alone! This is a relatively commonplace struggle for women who feel unsupported or alone when called upon to face the many deepening questions that menopause asks of the body, mind, and spirit.

What is menopause?

Menopause is the clinical name for the transition that takes place when women exit the chapter of life in which they were biologically available to become pregnant and give birth to children (at least, the old-fashioned way).

Menopause is, notoriously, the season of life during which we experience hot flashes and mood swings, as well as bodily changes that affect our appearance and our feeling of who we are in the world.

Menopause usually takes place between the ages of 45 and 55, with the average age of menopause being 51. It is considered to have officially taken place once 12 months have gone by since the end of menstruation.

Hormonally speaking, menopause and perimenopause (the stage preceding menopause) involve a gradual reduction of naturally produced estrogen and progesterone, the two main hormones in women’s bodies.

Menopause is, no doubt, a highly biological experience, but it is also colored by many cultural influences. Its suffering is in part made up of how we feel about aging in general, but also the implications of the transformation of the female body to a form less admired within the dominant culture.

In many ways, menopause is closing to the chapter of life that was opened when we went through puberty as adolescents. Everything relating to the adult female body’s potential for bearing children, sexuality, and perceived appeal to others, is touched by this change.

What are the symptoms of menopause?

Menopause has physical impacts as well as emotional effects on women.

At the physical level, the change in hormones and their work in the body can show themselves in certain telltale signs. Here are some of the physical signals that changing hormones are affecting the body:

Menstrual irregularity
Hot flashes and night sweats
Sleep difficulties
Headaches
Weight changes
Itchiness and physical irritability
Changes in vaginal moisture and sexual arousal

At the level of emotions and thoughts, some common experiences for women during menopause include the following:

Mourning one’s past, greater awareness of one’s aging, and a feeling of limited remaining time
Nostalgia or regrets about how the past was spent
Lowered self-esteem, sadness, and depression due to changing physical appearance or other changes
Anger, moodiness, and irritability

How does menopause contribute to addiction?

Addiction is always a risk whenever overwhelmingly painful life experiences are encountered, and a woman has not yet had the chance to build up a reliable way of nourishing and comforting herself with healthy tools and habits. To struggle during menopause is enormously common – we all cope and do the best we can – and some of us will be more prone to falling for addiction’s false promises.

Some women may increase their use of prescription medication or start drinking more than she ever would have before menopause. Women who have had drinking or addiction problems in the past may find themselves more prone to be triggered to use again.

Both estrogen and progesterone interact with substance abuse and addiction. With both estrogen and progesterone levels fluctuating during menopause, this can influence subjective experiences of craving or desiring to use substances.

What drugs are most commonly abused by women on menopause?

Women who are pulled into substance abuse during menopause are most likely to use alcohol and/or prescription painkillers, both of which are highly addictive and harm the hormonal change process.

Alcohol and prescriptions tend to be used because they work in the short term to delay emotional and physical pain, which a woman may feel unprepared to process and experience.

It’s important to understand that such attempts to numb or avoid pain are signals from the psyche that help is needed. Rather than permitting substance abuse to carry on and cement into addiction, which is difficult to uproot once it has taken hold, one can instead decide to “get the message” and seek therapeutic support of some kind.

What are the side effects of addiction?

Addiction creates many problems and does not cure the pain of menopause. Rather, substance use interferes with and delays the adaptations the body is attempting to accomplish.

Menopause is a psychologically and sometimes physically difficult process, and ideally, women would have more support for going through it. It is easy to feel alone, depressed, and unsupported while it takes place.

Using substances, instead of helping, will generate a vicious cycle, making depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and menopause symptoms worse.

Instead of numbing the pain of menopause, therefore, it is highly suggested to find ways to nourish one’s body and soul during the process, with compassion and kindness for the truth of how difficult the experience is.

Some further side effects of addiction include:

Changes to the brain and nervous system, affecting executive functioning (ability to make decisions), loss of willpower and self-control
Intense cravings to use substances and increased levels of discomfort when not using substances, eventually leading to an inability to function normally without drugs or alcohol
Increased obsession with substances, managing use, and consequences of use
Change of personality to become more negative and unhealthy in thought and emotion, as well more as self-centered
Life consequences, such as job loss, financial and legal troubles, and erosion of relationships
Worsening of physical and mental health symptoms, including menopause symptoms

How to deal with severe menopause?

The pain of menopause can be taken as an invitation to greater intimacy with yourself and your needs. To learn to comfort and support yourself from within your own well of resources is ultimately a positive thing.

Likewise, taking constructive and self-responsible action on your own behalf to get help to heal emotionally and feel better physically, can be a transformation in lifestyle that brings many new gifts into your life.

As we learn to radically care for the female body and soul as it goes through these important shifts and changes, we come to a greater understanding of our own uniquely lovable life form.

Here are some ideas for further investigation, which we have found to be supportive for this time of a woman’s physical and emotional journey.

1. Exercise

There is a reason that exercise tops the list of natural health approaches. Moving the body to the point of feeling energized, relaxed, and spent in a good way, triggers the body’s self-restoration mechanisms. Vigorous exercise brings peace of mind, better sleep, and a healthy body.

Choose an exercise format that feels good to your body – as long as you are exhausting yourself through the exercise and gently pushing yourself to raise your fitness level each time you exercise, you will be amply rewarded in your hormonal and neurotransmitter functioning.

2. Diet

Every day, more research surfaces that shed light on the many ways that food affects our physical and mental lives. From gut health and inflammation to immunity and cognition, every circuit of the body is affected by what minerals, vitamins, and other substances we take in.

There are many diets to choose from, so investigate or consult a nutritionist, to find a diet that works for you. Generally speaking, fresh, organic, whole, and nutrient-dense foods will be the way to a feeling of clean, clear sustenance. Genetically modified organisms, added sugars, processed foods, packaged foods, additives, chemicals, and complex carbohydrates are generally suggested to be dropped away from the diet, as possible.

3. Get Support

It is unreasonable to ask that women go through the steep challenges of menopause without someone with whom we can confidentially express emotions. Whether in a support group, among friends, or with a therapist, secure a safe space for unfolding the truth of how you are experiencing your life, without any risk of judgment or pressure to conform. Your menopause is unique and yours to experience, and your emotions are valid.

Villa Kali Ma can help women dealing with menopause and alcoholism

Villa Kali Ma is dedicated to helping women heal, during the sacred window of menopause, and any other stage of life. We offer inpatient and outpatient programs treating substance abuse, mental health struggles, and trauma. If you’re struggling with addiction, mental health problems, or traumatization, while staring down this significant life transition, consider working with us. We’d love to help you find your way along the road.

Tags alcohol and menopause, menopause and alcohol

Drug Addiction

Prozac Side Effects in Females: Why Does Prozac Affect Women Differently?

Post author By VKM
Post date November 4, 2024

Women are affected differently than men are by addiction, mental illness, and trauma. That’s part of why we here at Villa Kali Ma believe so deeply in our mission: to provide healing and treatment services by and for women.

Women’s bodies respond differently to substances like alcohol and medications, too. One common medication, Prozac, frequently prescribed for conditions like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and eating disorders, has stronger side effects for women than for men.

In this post, we’ll explore the topic of Prozac, Prozac abuse, side effects, and more.

Why does Prozac affect women differently?

Women’s bodies are composed of different ratios of water, fat, and hormones than men’s bodies. Women are also subject to a greater degree of fluctuation, due to the menstrual cycle, as well as pregnancy and menopause. All of these factors can influence a woman’s ability to metabolize Prozac.

What is Prozac?

Prozac is the brand name for fluoxetine, an SSRI-class drug (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor).

Prozac was one of the original “happy pills”, pioneered by early proponents of expanding the use of psychiatric medication. SSRIs are believed to help with depression. Since its introduction to the market, the list of conditions Prozac is prescribed to treat has expanded to include other mental health disorders as well.

Prozac, like other SSRIs, is believed to increase serotonin levels in the brain. Serotonin is theorized to have a primary role in the operations of mood, thus contributing to happiness and unhappiness.

Since the skyrocketing popularity of anti-depressants in the 1990s and early 2000s, more and more people in the United States have been prescribed drugs like Prozac, to treat more and more mental health conditions. Further research is needed to validate the theory of serotonin deficiency being the origin of depression, as well as into the longer-term safety and efficacy of SSRIs.

More recently, a percentage of the population misusing SSRIs has gained attention within the addictions and mental health field. This trend suggests that the psychoactive effects of antidepressants, widely believed to be nonaddictive and safe at appropriate doses, may after all represent potential for abuse.

What are the side effects of Prozac for women?

Prozac has numerous side effects, generally considered acceptable by the psychiatric and medical community, traded against a lessening of painful mental health symptoms.

Whether or not the side effects feel acceptable in comparison to the symptom-suppressing effects of the medication is a personal decision for each woman to make. The journey of finding the right medication and level of medication to take is generally ongoing, as most mental health patients will end up being guided into switching psychiatric drugs, adding additional drugs, and/or upping and lowering doses many times over the years.

It is noteworthy that some side effects are stronger for women than men. These side effects include:

gastrointestinal impacts like diarrhea, weight changes, nausea, constipation, loss of appetite and digestion problems
headaches, fatigue, dizziness, dry mouth
anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia
sexual dysfunction

What are the effects of Prozac on pregnancy?

More research is needed into the impacts of SSRIs like Prozac on mother and baby during pregnancy. Prozac is believed by some doctors to be safe to take throughout pregnancy at low doses, while others believe there is an increased risk of complications.

Given that all doctors agree that whatever substance ingested by a pregnant mother is also ingested by the fetus, it is wise to research and discuss options with your trusted health person before deciding what’s best in your case.

What are the effects of Prozac on female hormones?

Prozac interacts with female hormones and may disrupt your menstrual cycle. Side effects of Prozac that relate to hormones include an increase in premenstrual mood syndrome symptoms (headaches, irritability, moodiness, and cramping), cycle irregularity, and changes to the amount of blood (having a heavier or lighter period).

What are the serious side effects of Prozac in women?

Some side effects of Prozac are more serious and are important to be aware of. The risk of these side effects is greater at higher doses, and for the same reason, it is also more likely to occur when abusing the substance to get a psychoactive effect. So if you are on a high dose or you are using more Prozac than prescribed, look out for these.

Serious side effects include:

Abnormal bleeding
Seizures
Heart Palpitations, increased heart rate
Tremors and shakes
Nervousness and agitation
Suicidal thoughts
Mood swings
Allergic reactions
Serotonin syndrome (serotonin toxicity, potentially fatal)

Can Prozac cause seizures?

In concentrated doses, yes, Prozac can cause seizures. People with a history of epilepsy may want to avoid Prozac. Seizures are reported to be rare when taking Prozac as directed by a doctor, but the risk increases when put on a high dose and/or when intentionally taking more than prescribed, for recreational or self-medicating motives.

What are the signs of Prozac abuse?

The distinctions between chemical dependence on a high dose of Prozac, Prozac abuse, and Prozac addiction are somewhat fine and semantic. In general, signs of addiction to Prozac taking root include:

Taking pills more frequently, or more of them, than prescribed
Finishing prescriptions early
Obsessive thinking about the medication, including preoccupation with obtaining it or undue fear of running out of it
Taking pills at unscheduled times, spontaneously or in response to an emotional trigger
Moodiness, irritability, mania, or social withdrawal
Flu-like symptoms
Other addiction signals, including financial or legal trouble, life consequences, and so on

Women’s treatment for Prozac abuse

Stopping the use of Prozac, like any psychoactive substance, should be done carefully with trained health personnel supporting and supervising the process. Prozac withdrawal is a medical event that needs to be monitored for your own safety.

If you have been over-using your prescribed Prozac or abusing Prozac without a prescription, it is highly advised to seek substance abuse treatment. The stages of detoxification from Prozac, getting through the mental and emotional challenges of post-acute withdrawal (which can include a severe uptick in mental health symptoms like suicidal feelings and anxiety), as well as adjustment to sobriety as a permanent positive lifestyle, are best supported by a team of professionals.

Villa Kali Ma can assist women with prescription addiction

As more research about SSRIs like Prozac emerges, it’s apparent that addiction to these medications is growing in some portion of the population.

From the beginning of the use of SSRIs, chemical dependence, evidenced by withdrawal syndromes, has been documented though not widely discussed in the public forum.

Most vulnerable to developing SSRI dependence or addiction are those with pre-existing mental health disorders, (aka the people being prescribed these medications), and those with an active addiction or addiction history.

Our opinion at Villa Kali Ma is, if you would like to free yourself from reliance on a particular substance, including a prescription drug you no longer want to take for whatever your personal reasons are, that is a valid goal and we support you. Many prescription drugs are patently addictive. Whether you count SSRIs on the list of addictive prescriptions is a matter of debate and definitions of addiction, but if you want to get off your SSRI, we’ll help you.

To us, any substance that harms you physically while it suppresses your emotional symptoms creates dependence and is hard to get off because when you do, you go into withdrawals, and may not be a trustworthy medication in the long run.

Whatever your opinion is, we are here to help people get through chemical withdrawals from any substance, legal or illegal, and to reorient themselves towards positive, healthy, holistic, happy lives without chemistry.

References:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7613097/

Tags prozac side effects in females

Detox

Can You Detox While Pregnant?

Post author By VKM
Post date November 4, 2024

Women can be pregnant, and also be helplessly addicted to alcohol, prescriptions, and street drugs. Is this you? Is this someone you know? Don’t worry, you are not alone.

It’s a serious problem, yes. Many newborns start their lives addicted to drugs. These babies spend their first few days outside the womb going through the physical and psychological agonies of withdrawal.

This happens not because women don’t care about their unborn children, but rather because these women are fully enslaved, caught in a cycle of compulsive self-destruction wherein their personal willpower is ineffective to follow through on sane and rational decisions.

It’s really important to understand that these women are not bad people, they’re just addicted! Addiction behaves the same way in every single person, it’s not personal whatsoever.

If this is you, take heart. There is, as they say in AA, a solution. It’s called recovery, or living life fully sober, one day at a time.

Can you detox while pregnant? Is it safe?

It is possible to detox safely while pregnant, but it’s important to do so in a medical setting, or in a supervised detoxification facility.

Any substance that you are ingesting is being filtered by your placenta and shared with your baby as well. The impacts to your system introduced by a sudden absence of the drug will also affect the baby – the pain or suffering of withdrawal will be felt by the baby too.

To minimize the risk of birth defects, complications during childbirth, and extreme withdrawal symptoms, such as seizures or other life-threatening events, check yourself into a medical facility to undergo detox.

What should a woman know about detox and pregnancy?

The sooner you detoxify your body from all addictive substances and their harmful side effects, the better it will be for you and your baby.

If you are pregnant and addicted, do not wait to seek help. Every second counts, due to the relatively short and influential window of time during which a baby’s development is being determined by your own body’s condition.

The longer your baby is exposed to chemicals, the greater the risk of harm to the baby, in the form of death by miscarriage, birth defects, or being born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a condition generated when babies go into withdrawal at birth.

Getting sober begins with detoxification, or getting the drugs out of your system. Detoxification should always be monitored by medical professionals, because it is not an easy step of the process, psychologically and physically.

Many substances popularly used by addicted women today, including prescription opioids, benzodiazepines, and good old-fashioned alcohol, are dangerous to withdraw from due to the way they interact with key organs and systems in the body.

Seizures, heart attacks, and other life-threatening medical incidents can happen during detoxification. When pregnant, medical monitoring is essential to secure the life of the baby as well as to make sure the mother safely detoxes all harmful substances.

Why shouldn’t a woman attempt to detox on her own when she is pregnant?

There are several reasons to check yourself into a medically supervised detox if you are pregnant, rather than trying to detox on your own. These two are primary.

The first is that the withdrawal process can be dangerous to you and the baby, especially in the case of alcohol and prescription pills, and whenever drugs are used in combination with alcohol and medications. Sometimes medical interventions are needed, including medications administered to help reduce the severity of some of the worse withdrawal symptoms.

It will be much easier on you and safer for the baby if you are medically supported through the phase of cleaning psychoactive chemicals out of your body. If the withdrawal process were to go poorly, it is possible not only to lose the baby but also to lose your own life. A medical setting is essential.

The second reason is that most women underestimate the overpowering nature of cravings that kick in during detox. The further impact of pregnancy hormones can amplify cravings. Those who attempt to detox alone are much less likely to be successful at getting through to the other side than those who do it in a medical setting. When you’re pregnant, there isn’t enough time to try it and see if you beat the odds.

How to safely detox during pregnancy?

Detoxing safely during pregnancy involves making and following a plan together with other people. It should not be done alone as an impulsive reaction. The instinct to get clean, because you’re pregnant, is right and good, it’s just important to do it safely by following a plan.

The plan will involve medical personnel monitoring the detoxification journey, nutritional support, hydration support, and therapeutic services to help you through the worst of the emotional aspects of withdrawal.

The plan will also include where you will go after detoxification (ideally into residential treatment, or the next best available option for you), so you are as protected as possible from the urge to return to drugs and alcohol, and so that you can be properly supported to learn sobriety skills.

Immediately after detox, you will need to participate as actively as you can in a substance abuse treatment program, taking responsibility for your rehabilitation and recovery so that the transformation in lifestyle, thoughts, and feelings that is necessary for long-term sobriety can take place.

Recovery is accomplished one day at a time and never requires more than doing the very best you can, in the moment. You will only ever be dealing with the stretch of road right in front of you, which means a lot of letting go of control, plans, and expectations, instead learning to be adaptable and to take things as they come, with as much courage and cooperation as possible.

It is best to keep things very, very simple, and to keep your priorities crystal clear, sobriety being priority number one in every single moment. You may want to prepare yourself for the fact that, to stay sober every day, especially in the early days, takes commitment and full surrender to the process. This almost always means doing things you feel resistant to doing and following people’s advice and examples.

This is a temporary stage in which you are rebooting your whole life. All the difficulties of early recovery are eventually rewarded later on, with a surprising joy that you won’t be able to predict, but which will make it all worth it (and more).

Much like motherhood itself, sobriety will be an adventure – it might seem scary now, but once it arrives you will never be able to imagine your life without it. If this is you, we’re cheering you on!

What to expect during detox while you’re pregnant?

Being in the unknown is hard for all women. When you’re deciding to get off drugs, and you’re pregnant, you have every right to feel vulnerable and scared of what’s to come. We’re here to tell you that if you relax, follow instructions as they come, try to stay out of fear, and surrender to the process, you can get through this challenging stage.

Perhaps you can draw comfort from knowing that many women have gone before you into this same unknown, and come out the other side intact. Countless numbers of women who stood where you are now have gone on to live beautiful, humanly-imperfect lives together with their daughters and sons.

One barrier that sometimes scares women off from entering detox is fear of pain. Pain is a temporary part of the withdrawal process, it’s true. It is also part of giving birth. But pain can be, and is, tolerated and survived, every day, by women all over the world. And furthermore, there is a big difference between pain with support, and pain without it.

If you are in a medically supervised detox setting, there will be taper-down options for slowly adjusting to having less pain-numbing substances in your body. Some doctors may suggest medications that can help you reduce slowly, and/or drugs to counteract withdrawal symptoms, as well.

In your first sober weeks, in treatment, there will also be emotional support options for helping you to manage the anxiety you may be having about pain, fears of the unknown, and just feeling plain terrified to be a mother (or a mother again). Know that your courageous decision to get clean for your own sake and for your baby is meaningful and important, and so so valued.

Villa Kali Ma can assist pregnant women with detox and addiction

Villa Kali Ma offers medically supervised detoxification as a part of our spectrum of addiction treatment services. We welcome all women into our doors, including pregnant women.

Our programs for women address substance abuse, mental illness, and trauma through a combination of evidence-based clinical methods with holistic practices like massage, acupuncture, and yoga.

If you’re pregnant, first of all, congratulations. If you’ve decided to detox, congratulations again! We’re here for you if you need us.

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Mental Health

National Depression Screening Day 2024

Post author By VKM
Post date October 1, 2024

National Depression Screening Day is October 10, 2024

National Depression Screening Day takes place annually on October 10th. This year, we at Villa Kali Ma are sharing our support for the advocacy campaign, as we recognize the importance of raising the profile of depression in the light of public attention.

Depression is a very painful form of mental illness affecting millions of people. Sadly enough, reports indicate that depression is on the rise, with no small number of sufferers succumbing to suicide as a result.

We know the heartache of depression from the inside, and we know that there is a cure. It is possible to reconnect with the spark of life, even after we and everyone else have started to think our flame has gone fully out. No one is beyond help, and that’s the truth.

But to get that help, we have to know that there is a name for what’s wrong with us and that there is a solution for it. Depression, as horrible as it is, is actually not a death sentence (or need not be). Depression is, compared to some forms of mental illness, rather responsive to treatment. When the right kind of contact is made, human to human, and the right kind of help for a depressed person is able to be administered in the way they need, things can be turned around into their opposite (a life of joy!).

All in all, this October 10th, we here at Villa Kali Ma are very interested to further explore and reflect on how we can all participate in healing depression, nationwide.

What is National Depression Screening Day?

National Depression Screening Day is an action campaign dedicated to the topic of depression, the debilitating and deadly mental health condition affecting more and more Americans each year.

Since not everyone manifests depression symptoms in the same way, it sometimes takes a screening for the condition to be recognizable to a sufferer or their loved ones. Testing can validate and support a person’s ability to have compassion for themselves and to take their own suffering seriously.

Teenagers and adults, men and women, and people in different population categories around the globe may experience and express their depression differently, based on many biological and social factors. Therefore diagnostic tools like a depression screen can be helpful as one measure to potentially indicate the presence of a serious mental health condition.

How to observe National Depression Screening Day?

In our opinion, the best way to observe National Depression Screening Day is to participate in the dialogue about the topic.

Are you familiar with depression yourself (we are!)? If yes, what was it like for you? If you’re no longer depressed now, how did you turn it around? What did you do, who helped you? What did you need to realize about yourself, the world, and your place within it, to be able to come back to the surface of life?

Or maybe you have loved and been close with someone who had depression. What was that like for you? How did you try, succeed, or fail to help them? What feelings does the chronic, unchanging sadness or low spirits of another bring up for you?

If you’re a mental health practitioner or even just a willing ally, you may want to take a depression screening yourself, to learn more about the signs and symptoms.

We always suggest a deep dive into the positive, too: look into the many cures both holistic and mainstream, which are currently used for depression. Ponder the world of solutions, the promising data, for example coming out of the trauma research field, or the use of so-called “nutraceuticals”.

What conclusions you reach are yours, but form a personal opinion about the topic, and engage!

What are the signs to know it’s sadness, not depression?

Depression is different from mourning, grief, and sadness. Although they can feel very similar, and depression can involve many of the same symptoms as grief – sadness, crying a lot, isolating, halting self-care, and needing to sleep more – the key difference is that depression is not a temporary feeling or mood in reaction to circumstances.

Rather, depression is a lingering, or chronic state in which we become trapped in lowered levels of mood, with less energy, loss of hope in the future, and diminished enjoyment in the now. It is frequently accompanied by a desire to die or to commit self-harm.

One way to check whether it’s depression or sadness is to see if there is a life circumstance present, in which it would be expected to feel that way, such as after a loss of a loved one or a serious life change. When we feel blue, sad, low-energy feelings even when we “should” be feeling ok, or when that is essentially our baseline no matter what’s going on externally, that can be a sign that it’s depression rather than sadness.

Why is National Depression Screening Day important?

The painful truth about untreated depression is that it can and often does end in death by suicide. This is a risk we cannot afford to ignore, nor to minimize. When symptoms of depression are not noticed nor taken care of, the deep troubles within, which are currently coming out as depression symptoms, can become more dangerous and turn into violence against the self.

Screening for depression can save lives. As the saying goes, “Name it to tame it”. Screening for depression can help name the darkness, which begins the process of healing it.

Villa Kali Ma Supports National Depression Screening Day

At Villa Kali Ma, we are in favor of screening for depression more frequently, especially in vulnerable populations like teenagers, people with addiction, and the elderly, to help raise awareness and understanding of depression, and to help find a cure.
There are many remedies to depression, ranging from exercise to diet to psychotherapy, which can help touch a person and bring them into the circle of light from out of their dark isolation.

It is heartbreaking to consider how many people feel the way depressed people feel. We are deeply motivated to help shift this, as a part of our mission to support and protect women’s mental health.

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Mental Health

World Mental Health Day 2024

Post author By VKM
Post date October 1, 2024

World Mental Health Day is October 10, 2024.

This October, we honor World Mental Health Day. October 10th is the day set aside annually to reflect on mental health, and how we can support it to shine and thrive all over the world. This year’s theme is “It is Time To Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace”. It sure is, isn’t it?

What is World Mental Health Day?

World Mental Health Day is an awareness campaign intended to raise consciousness and educate about mental health topics around the globe. Its goal is partly to help share stories and experiences of people with mental health struggles, and to reduce stigma and isolation through creating conversations and making connections.

The day is also intended to help share ideas and solutions for how to live with more mental health on the whole, as a collective – something we can all continue to work on, as the madness of the world plainly shows!

The day is also purposed to help raise the standard of care applied to those with serious and chronic mental health conditions, the people most affected by the field of mental health.

What is the history of World Mental Health Day?

World Mental Health Day was established in 1992 by the World Federation of Mental Health. Led by then-deputy secretary general Richard Hunter, the purpose of the day of awareness and action was to advocate for mental health, globally.

In recognition of substandard treatment of those with mental health struggles in some portions of the world, as well as a global level of mental health crisis affecting humanity, plus widespread ignorance about mental health issues, the idea was to focus on the topic and bring solutions to the fore.

For the first few years after its founding, World Mental Health Day was honored by way of a multinational broadcast sharing information and messages related to mental health advocacy. Starting in 1994, World Mental Health Day had annual themes. The first theme was “Improving the Quality of Mental Health Services throughout the World”.

Over the years, more and more countries have participated through advocacy related events and action plans. It is in large part a result of efforts related to World Mental Health Day that understanding and acceptance of mental health concerns has grown around the world.

What are some FAQ’s about World Mental Health Day?

Here are some questions that people commonly have about mental health.

What causes mental illness?

Mental illness is currently believed to be partly biological or genetic in origin, and partly caused by life circumstances and experiences. In particular, the role of trauma – not only from singular shocking experiences but also from more chronic conditions like neglect and abuse – in creating mental health disorders later on in life is receiving more and more attention.

Poor nutrition from the modern American diet, the stress of poverty and living in polluted areas, and exposure to environmental toxins through agricultural practices and other use of chemicals to manufacture products we use daily, is also being studied as a possible factor in mental health conditions.

How do I know if I have a mental illness?

Consult a professional. It is fine to do preliminary research on your own, of course, but we do suggest that you be mindful that many symptoms of mental illness are relatable to all. We all experience some problems focusing our attention, some mood struggles, and chronic tension, for example.

However, when your thoughts, feelings, and struggles to stay balanced represent a serious disruption to your life, (including your ability to make a living for yourself and have relationships with others) something may be out of balance, which could be addressed holistically and/or clinically.

It can be very helpful to be given a diagnostic name for your particular kind of struggles, such as Major Depression or Generalized Anxiety Disorder, as long as you don’t overidentify with the diagnosis and take it to define you totally.

How can I help someone who has a mental illness?

Follow the golden rule of “how do I like to be treated?” Most people would like to be treated the same as everyone else, and not to be marginalized or made out to be overly fragile or different.

You cannot lose when you apply empathy, curiosity, and show willingness to learn more about what a person is experiencing, without applying judgment or attempting to fix them.

It’s generally best not to give advice or to tell someone to look on the bright side, or that everything will be ok, as this tends to give the message that we are not comfortable with their suffering. Connect, engage, and show that you have no need to judge someone, and the person will most likely feel safe to tell you more about what it’s like to be them.

How to observe World Mental Health Day?

The best way to observe World Mental Health Day is to do our best to have good mental health ourselves. Once our own mental health is relatively secure, we can speak and share more with others about what it takes to have healthy thoughts, emotions and bodies. Here are three things we can try, this year, as a part of celebrating World Mental Health:

1. Double Your Self Care

This year, see what you can do to strengthen your own self care practices. Can you eat cleaner, exercise more, spend more time outside? Can you turn off your phone, clean your clutter, or take an art class? With whom in your life can you connect, heart to heart? With whom can you play or laugh? What is that makes you feel balanced, centered, whole, alive, and heart-awakened? Do that, more!

2. Practice Boundaries

Mental Health thrives in an environment of healthy interpersonal boundaries. This year, what can you do to strengthen the lines that helpfully differentiate you from another? Where can you say no more? Where can you allow yourself to stop taking responsibility for another, but instead take more responsibility for you? Boundaries are the golden ticket to mental health.

3. Practice Self-Responsible Communication

Mental Health does best in an environment of kind observation of the mind and emotions, rather than acting out our impulses and behaviors without knowing our motivation. This year, practice self-observation through meditation or journaling, then practice communicating your truth to another! How can you talk about what you need, what you want, and what you’re feeling as a result of those wants and needs? To learn more about communicating cleanly, dig into non-violent communication.

Why is World Mental Health Day important?

Although a lot of progress has been made in raising awareness about mental health epidemics we are facing, collectively, we are still a long way off from being healthy and happy in our species at large.

It is important to continue to cultivate compassion and create spaces of dialogue around the variety of human experiences, what is different about us and perhaps even more importantly, what we have in common.

We all want to be free and sufficiently supported to live life in the way that we personally would define as “happiness”. How can we ensure that right for every single member of the human race, whether we personally approve of their choices or not?

How might we improve our ability to include, to embrace, to recognize our own self in the other? What will it take to stop marginalizing, splitting, and dividing into groups that turn on each other?

These are questions to ponder, that will help lead us to the unity of heart and spirit that is necessary to grow past mental illness and into health and happiness as a collective.

Villa Kali Ma Supports World Mental Health Day

As a holistic mental health care provider dedicated to serving women, Villa Kali Ma supports World Mental Health Day fully. We encourage everyone to participate in whatever way speaks to them, to spread awareness and raise consciousness. For us, this year we carry on walking the long, meaningful road towards total health in the minds, bodies and spirits of women everywhere.

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Alcohol Addiction

PCOS and Alcohol

Post author By VKM
Post date September 23, 2024

Polycystic ovary syndrome, or polycystic ovarian syndrome, (PCOS), is a common endocrine disorder affecting women in their reproductive years. The name of the syndrome comes from accompanying cysts formed on the ovaries, though the cysts are not the cause of the disorder and aren’t always present.

Lifestyle choices that improve diet, sleep, mindfulness and exercise are the best ways to address PCOS naturally. Symptoms can be alleviated through eating differently, sleeping better, regulating the nervous system through meditation, and in general aligning more to nature’s cycles.

Diet includes beverages, such as alcohol. Women with PCOS might be wondering, does drinking alcohol affect my PCOS?

Does drinking alcohol make PCOS symptoms worse?

Regular alcohol intake can be a negative force in the story of any woman’s health, and PCOS is no exception.

One factor to consider is weight. The majority of women suffering with PCOS also struggle with weight, and find that their symptoms are helped by losing 5 to 10% of their body weight. Eliminating alcohol is one way to lose weight without having to eat a lot less.

Alcohol also affects blood sugar levels, which has an impact on insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is correlated to PCOS.

Insulin resistance means that a person’s body resists the effects of insulin. The body’s mechanism for lowering blood sugar levels works poorly, leading to the body producing extra insulin.

Increased insulin levels leads to an increase in androgen production, a hormone which all bodies need but which can exacerbate PCOS symptoms when in found in the body in excess. The increase in painful PCOS symptoms in turn can lead to cravings and affect healthy food choices, leading to excess food intake, therefore weight gain.

Women with PCOS tend to experience more depression, anxiety and stress. Alcohol contributes to depression, anxiety and stress, too, acutely during hangovers and also as a longer term effect.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is correlated with PCOS. Women with PCOS have an increased prevalence of NAFLD. Although this condition isn’t caused by alcohol – it comes from high blood sugar levels, insulin resistance, obesity, and high levels of fats in the blood – alcohol makes NAFLD worse and people with NAFLD are advised not to drink alcohol at all, because of the potential for further liver damage.

Sleep disturbances are also linked to PCOS, as is alcohol. Given the critical importance of sleep to restoring all body systems, poor sleep caused by alcohol use is a risk factor for worsening PCOS symptoms, as well. Healthy patterns of sufficient sleep are a key way to reduce PCOS pain.

In sum, alcohol consumption can be said to affect PCOS negatively, making symptoms worse, through worsening insulin levels, sleep, mood, NAFLD and body weight.

Does alcohol affect insulin levels?

Insulin levels are impacted adversely by alcohol, because of the way that alcohol effects blood sugar.

Moderate alcohol intake causes blood sugar to rise, while excessive alcohol intake can cause blood sugar levels to crash, both of which further trigger imbalances which the body struggles to correct through manufacturing hormones in excess.

The hormone insulin helps regulate blood sugar in the body, keeping levels in the range of what is healthy for the body’s many complex and subtle operations.

In about half of women with PCOS, insulin resistance is a problem that’s contributing to painful symptoms. This means the body doesn’t respond to insulin as well as it could and therefore is producing an overabundance of the hormone in order to process sugar, resulting in exceptionally high levels of insulin in the blood.

When we drink alcohol and change our blood sugar levels, this triggers impacts in insulin production, especially when we already have an insulin response problem, as women with PCOS do.

Does alcohol affect hormone levels?

Alcohol consumption affects hormones negatively. It increases estrogen levels and causes progesterone levels to sink.

Since hormone levels are already a factor with PCOS, leading to menstrual irregularities and other painful symptoms, many women decide that these alcohol risks are not worth it.

Does alcohol affect fertility for women with PCOS?

Anyone hoping to have a baby soon or someday should be aware that alcohol can affect fertility in anyone, including women with PCOS.

Alcohol use in general makes it harder to get pregnant, and even after stopping alcohol use, some women’s fertility may be impacted in the longer term by having used alcohol in excess.

Alcohol is believed to reduce the number of eggs a woman has in her ovarian reserve, and also affects menstrual cycle and ovulation. Alcohol also disturbs estrogen and progesterone levels.

Should you stop drinking alcohol if you have PCOS?

Choosing to stop drinking alcohol is a highly personal decision. Only you can look into your heart and know whether you are willing and ready to give up the socially lubricating or emotionally-numbing effects of alcohol, and to find different ways to live happily, without that particular substance being in your life. The path of sobriety is beautiful, rewarding, and at times difficult, even when we have really good reasons to be sober.

We here at Villa Kali Ma favor sobriety highly. In our opinion, life sober is better for a million reasons. Physical health and taking good care of our precious bodies is only one of them. We also count brighter minds, more loving hearts, connected spirits, and meaningful lives (all things considered!) as privileges we earn through protecting our sobriety first and foremost.

For women with PCOS, there seem to be many advantages to taking alcohol out of your diet if you can. Alcohol’s effects on blood sugar levels, liver, hormones, and mood alone are good enough reasons to boot it out of your body. An extra consideration for your decision process, if you do have PCOS, is that many mainstream Western medications, including the diabetes medication Metformin, are rendered essentially ineffective by alcohol, or may have negative interactions.

All in all, each woman must decide for herself what her relationship to alcohol will be. Life is designed to be challenging no matter what, with or without alcohol. But we have many choices that can strengthen or weaken us, including the option to limit known negative factors that just make everything worse.

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist Women With Alcohol Addiction

At Villa Kali Ma, we specialize in helping women to recover from trauma, addiction and mental and emotional pain, freeing them up to live happy, wakeful lives in sobriety.

We offer addiction and mental health recovery programs to treat substance abuse and co-occurring mental health disorders, as well as trauma, in dedicated holistic facilities that unite the best of Western approaches with ancient practices like Yoga and Ayurveda.

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Mental Health

Herbs for Mental Health and Addiction

Post author By VKM
Post date September 23, 2024

Did you know that most medicines used today were originally inspired by ingredients found growing naturally in the wild? Many commonplace seeds, fruits, leaves, roots, bark, flowers, resins, and other parts of plants, trees, and mushrooms carry powerful healing properties.

Before the rise of Western medicine, humanity relied heavily on nature’s pharmacy for cures, remedies, and ways to lessen our ordinary life pain, discomfort, and imbalances. In those days, it was understood that nature could help not only with physical illnesses but also with disturbances of the soul, like melancholy or agitation.

Today, science has helped us to understand more about how the active ingredients in certain plants work together with our bodily chemistry, neurotransmitters, and hormones, to help us recover a state of mental health. When we’re depressed, anxious, possessed by an addiction, or otherwise disturbed from our naturally happy state, we can look to nature’s many medicines for help.

What are the best herbs for mental health?

Many good types of herbs and plant extracts can help improve mental health. Which herbs to use depends on the imbalance you are hoping to correct. Lavender, for example, treats anxiety, while St. John’s Wort is used for depression.

Adaptogens represent an important class of natural medicines for mental health. Adaptogens include a variety of plants: roots like rhodiola and ashwagandha, mushrooms like Lion’s Mane, and herbs like Holy Basil are considered adaptogens. Adaptogens help the body respond to stress and normalize, generating more resilience in the face of life’s demands.

What are complementary and alternative medicines?

Complementary and alternative medicines are paths to approaching illness that lie outside of the mainstream Western medicine model. They work well in tandem with Western medicines most of the time and are generally not considered to be replacements for Western medicine, especially in emergencies. They are generally applied best in reasonably healthy bodies, to improve functioning and strengthen.

Some commonly used complementary and alternative medicines are herbs, often prepared as a tea, such as calendula flower tea, vitamins like Vitamin D, minerals like selenium or magnesium, nutritional supplements, such as fish oil, as well as certain nutrient-dense whole foods or superfoods, like sauerkraut or blueberries.

For people who are basically healthy, these natural medicines are often sufficient alone to correct imbalances, strengthen immunity, and improve neuronal and hormonal pathways.

It’s important with any medicine, natural or synthetic, to pay close attention to the body’s reaction, to listen to one’s intuition and feeling, and to stop a cure if it is creating pain or having bad effects. Every person is different and not all cures are right for everyone. Healing is always a somewhat exploratory path and should be engaged in with caution and presence.

How have complementary and alternative medicines helped with mental health?

Complementary and alternative medicines are often anecdotally reported to be effective for a range of mental health disturbances. Anecdotal evidence is offered by people speaking to their own experience, as well as by alternative health practitioners. These reports suggest that what was once known by all to be self-evidently true, that plants can help by lifting one’s mood, calming one’s nervous system, and helping the body to release stress, is still true today.

From a data perspective, however, it must be said that most natural medicinal cures have not been studied at scale nor with scientific rigor, for example with double-blind tests and a control group. The funding does not exist for such studies to be conducted, and there is little financial motivation to prove the beneficial effects, given that other medicines are more lucrative.

Of the existing studies and anecdotal evidence, we know the most about how herbs can support people with depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and stress.

How to use the medicines safely?

Although complementary and alternative medicines are natural, they are still potent. It is important to be careful to pay attention to dosage and to monitor your body as it responds to the cure you are introducing.

Ideally, work with a knowledgeable, experienced natural medicines practitioner, and consider all context clues and possibilities. Interact with your body as you would with a friend you love and care about.

When the body is manifesting an imbalance, even something like anxiety or depression, understand that the symptoms themselves contain a lot of information pointing to a deeper concern that we would like to resolve, not suppress or brush off.

Most natural medicines are relatively safe, with very few side effects, but nevertheless, you do not want to overload the body with a new chemical agent, even a natural one.

Apply common sense – don’t try creating natural medicines on your own without being sure you are sufficiently trained, follow instructions, be wary of wonder cures (if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is), learn from the experiences of others, and don’t give remedies to children without consulting someone experienced and knowledgeable.

Also, it is important to be aware that some self-help or alternative health gurus push their products for financial gain, rather than for your best interest. Listen to your gut and don’t fall for pushy sales tactics.

The best natural medicines are widely available and do not need to be very expensively produced. That said, pay attention to things like whether or not the product is organic, wild-harvested, how it has been extracted, and whether any chemicals have been used or added. We can only ever do our best, but it stands to reason that what we put in our bodies should be the highest quality we can procure, ideally.

What are herbal medicines and supplements?

Herbal remedies are natural medicines made from plants. Examples of herbal remedies are echinacea (commonly used to support the immune system to fight off colds in winter) or Valerian root (a preparation used to help calm the nervous system, aiding with anxiety).

Depending on the herb, remedies may be taken as a tea, as a powder (usually dissolved in water or juice), as a tincture, or as a topical balm or cream.

The term supplements refers to a category that includes minerals, vitamins, and animal-derived products like bone broth or cod liver oil.

Natural medicines usually have a recommended daily maximum, and it is important not to exceed that amount unless you are working with a practitioner whom you trust, and who believes it necessary for your case. Anything used in excess could have negative effects on the body.

It’s important to be aware that some natural medicines interfere with or negatively interact with some conventional medicines, so please be careful with supplements and do your research if you are taking a conventional pharmaceutical, and vice versa.

What herbal medicines and supplements assist with brain function?

There is a class of herbal medicines and supplements called cognitive enhancers, which support the brain to stay healthy. These are used for supporting memory functions and normalizing other brain pathways, to help us stay mentally sharp and flexible. Ginko (ginkgo biloba) and ginseng (Panax ginseng) are two herbs that are commonly used for this purpose, and sage is another option.

Ginko

Ginko is an extract made from seeds and leaves of the ginkgo tree, originally Chinese. It is used to help improve concentration, focus, and memory, and has an application in supporting those with dementia or other forms of cognitive decline.

Ginseng

Ginseng is a plant grown in many corners of the world. Korean ginseng, or Panax ginseng, is the kind of ginseng most commonly used as an herbal remedy. It is believed to help with memory and mental performance.

Sage

Sage is a wild shrub also grown domestically, the oils of which are frequently used in aromatherapy. Sage is used as an herbal remedy to help with brain function, but it is also believed to help with both anxiety and depression.

What herbal medicines help with anxiety and insomnia?

Anxiety is commonly treated with herbal remedies, as are sleep problems. The body may respond well to the relaxing effects of many of nature’s medicines.

There are many choices when it comes to soothing anxiety with herbs, roots, and flowers, including passionflower, valerian, Rhodiola, hops, German chamomile, lemon balm, holy basil, gotu kola, ashwagandha, and lavender.

There is a certain subtype of herbal medicine called flower remedies, which some people have found to be very helpful, particularly for anxiety. Rescue Remedy, a popular flower remedy, is used to help with stress.

Many of the natural remedies for anxiety are also helpful during drug withdrawal, such as lavender and passionflower.

What herbal medicines help with depression and bipolar disorder?

People seeking support for depression and bipolar disorder have a variety of options in the natural medicine category.

One herb, St. John’s Wort, is commonly used to help to protect against low mood.

Minerals are usually also recommended for those struggling with depression, as selenium and vitamin D in particular have been reported to help stabilize mood and lessen the severity of lows, perhaps related to their role in the reduction of inflammation.

Folic acid is a vitamin that is almost always recommended for people struggling with depression, and an animal-derived supplement (also available in vegan form, from flax seeds) to help with boosting Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil supplementation) is often advised and found to be helpful, as well.

Dramatically improving diet and nutrition (alongside exercising more) is one of the clearest paths to improving depression and bipolar disorder naturally. Many herbal remedies come in the form of superfoods, such as blueberries, nuts and seeds, and salmon.

A promising area of research includes supplementation with amino acids, like L-tryptophan and 5 hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), as these substances are precursors to serotonin, an important neurotransmitter that is believed to affect depression. Some patients and practitioners of functional medicine report positive results using these amino acids to target mood disorders.

Finally, many of the same herbs recommended for anxiety are also advised for people struggling with depression, as the two conditions are related. In particular, adaptogens like ginger, turmeric, holy basil, Rhodiola, and ashwagandha are believed to be powerful in the treatment of both depression and anxiety, through the way that they reprogram the body’s response to stress, thereby building resilience.

Which herbal medicines help with addiction?

Drugs and alcohol must be eliminated from the body before any kind of healing can take place, natural or otherwise. Some herbs help with the withdrawal process, relieving anxiety and distress, and strengthening certain key organs, like the heart and the spleen, to recover after the many stressors of addiction.

Valerian, passionflower, and St. John’s Wort are believed to help emotionally during withdrawals, through the same mechanism that makes them good supports for healing depression and anxiety. Kudzu, or Japanese arrowroot flowers, may help stay calm during withdrawal from alcohol.

Addiction to alcohol, as well as the withdrawal process, is very rough on the body. Several herbal remedies are recommended for helping the body to recover after prolonged use of toxic substances.

A tincture of hawthorn berries can be taken to strengthen the heart, during and after withdrawals. Dandelion is another herb that has many health benefits, in particular, due to its detoxifying effects. It is useful during detoxification from drugs and alcohol for that reason, supporting the spleen to be cleansed.

The liver is another key organ affected by drugs and in particular alcohol – for cleansing the liver milk thistle is a supportive herbal remedy. Burdock root is a powerful detoxifier, helpful in particular for the kidneys.

Villa Kali Ma Supports Herbs for Mental Health and Addiction for Women

At Villa Kali Ma, we are big believers in the many abundant cures offered by nature to help us recover lives of meaning and purpose.

Our unique program offers addiction and mental health recovery paths for women who suffer from substance abuse and co-occurring disorders, and we integrate natural health into every aspect of our program. From diet to nutrition to herbal remedies, we make the best of what nature gave us, to help us find our way back to connection with all of life.

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Mental Health

September is National Yoga Month

Post author By VKM
Post date September 9, 2024

What is National Yoga Awareness Month?

National Yoga Awareness Month is a month-long campaign dedicated to raising awareness about yoga.

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we are happy to sing yoga’s praises, far and wide! In many ways, yoga represents the heart of our program. Our founder, Kay White, credits her recovery from substance addiction in very large part to yoga.

No matter who we are, where we’ve been, or what we’re staring down in our life’s journey, yoga is a viable, supportive path for finding a way through.

What are the benefits of yoga?

Yoga is a healing resource that goes far beyond what it can do for physical body strength, balance, and flexibility. Yoga is a comprehensive system that heals mind, body, and soul, through breath work and lifestyle philosophy as much as through physical postures. This ancient system is scientific and methodical, tested and refined by thousands of practitioners over thousands of years.

Many people start yoga these days because they are looking to improve their physical fitness. Yoga strengthens the core of the body, extends the range of motion, corrects alignment, improves balance, and tones muscles.

Yoga also brings deep peace, by healing internal organs and glands. Yoga accesses the part of our physiology that hosts our mental and emotional experiences. In modern parlance, yoga can be said to rewire pathways of the brain and nervous system, anchoring us into habits of happiness, peace, and freedom.

How can yoga help mental health, addiction, and trauma?

At Villa Kali Ma, we have observed that trauma, addiction, and mental health imbalances are intertwined. Yoga is a phenomenal resource for all three because it gets to the very root to repair our deep damage and disconnection. By restoring the physiological functioning of the body, the emotional processing ability of the heart, and the clarity of the brain and nervous system, yoga gets to the bottom of it all.

Studies conducted on the role of yoga in mental health treatment suggest that yoga reduces symptoms associated with conditions of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders, through its ability to reduce the impacts of stress on the entire physiology.

Trauma lives on in the body mind and spirit through a damaged nervous system, such that we are trapped in frightening moments of the past. Through yoga’s many regulating, harmonizing, and toning impacts on the nervous system, as well as through its kind and humanistic approach to suffering, yoga can easily be used as an effective trauma treatment, restoring safety and now-moment orientation inside our bodies.

Yoga helps in part because it does not separate the physical body from thought and feeling. Rather, yoga expresses a basic unity, that thought, emotio, and body cannot be fully teased apart. Isn’t it true that it’s easier to think clear, sane thoughts when our mood is positive? Isn’t it easier to feel positive emotions when our bodies are also healthy?

The word yoga, which translates as “joining” or “union”, reflects yoga’s basic mechanism, which is to reunify us with our source of being. Whatever we believe in our hearts about where human beings come from and what we’re doing here, most can agree that to be cut off, lost, and fragmented feels lonely and bad.

Without saying exactly what it is that we are reunifying with, necessarily, yoga erases our existential isolation and reconnects us to the hub of the wheel of life, healing our cosmic attachment trauma.

Then everything else gets better too. When we are in harmony with the higher music of our own lives, we think sane thoughts, feel our emotions inside our heart space, and experience our physical bodies as strong and alive.

This makes us resilient. We feel safe, curious about life and other people, and strong enough to face expected and unexpected challenges. We become unconditionally centered and connected. Even when external events are not what we prefer, we feel our basic goodness, are able to observe our own thoughts without identifying with them, and have trust that whatever transformations will be asked of us, we will come out the other side stronger.

Yoga benefits our mental and emotional bodies as much as our physical ones, bringing us into a state of clarity of mind, while stimulating the heart center to bloom and do its job well, too. When our hearts are working, we are able to feel deep feelings of love, inspiration, and connection. We are also able to move through the darker shades of emotion, experiences like grief and anger, with grace.

What are some ways to practice yoga?

The wonderful thing about yoga is that there are many branches and paths to it. Some ways to explore yoga this month include:

1. Shop around: take a class at each yoga studio near you

Many studios offer a starting deal for you to get the lay of the land. You could take this month as an opportunity to find a “home” yoga studio that’s just right for you.

2. Experiment with different kinds of yoga

Try early morning energizing classes and evening relaxation oriented classes. Try kundalini yoga and yin yoga. Give yourself the month of September to experiment and try everything that sounds intriguing and even intimidating to you. Let your body lead and pay attention to how you feel, what excites you and rises and opens your energy, or what doesn’t.

3. Try yoga online

On YouTube and other channels, many yoga teachers offer free classes, guided meditations, and information about yogic philosophy. Make a goal for yourself for this month, committing deeply to one teacher or trying out different channels. You could do one practice a day for the 30 days of September, or just one practice a week, whatever feels like the right level of challenge for you, that you can genuinely commit to.

4. Create your own practice

If you know a little bit about yoga already and have mastered some poses, design your own routine, making it exactly what you love and need most. It can be short – just 15 minutes long as a start. If you want to, share your pose sequence with others, record a class as a video, and gift it to friends.

5. Mix up the pace

You might like to try holding only a very few poses, but holding them for a longer time, to get the deepening experience. You could dedicate your September to be a restorative, yin yoga month, centered on helping you find greater levels of nurturance and safety. On the flip side, if you’re looking to take your life up a notch, you can try moving through poses more swiftly than you normally do, as a faster, more aerobic experience. Whatever you do, try it for a month and take note of the effects, as a way to find your own, personal path through this ancient healing system.

With any of these, please pay attention to your body, be mindful of its signals, and don’t injure yourself! It’s always better to start slow and build up at a sustainable pace than to rush or push.

What yoga programs do we offer at Villa Kali Ma?

Villa Kali Ma is a holistic treatment program for women struggling with substance abuse, mental health disorders, and trauma. Yoga is a core component of all of our programs.

We use a gentle, trauma-informed therapeutic approach to yoga that accepts all women just as they are coming to us, without judgment or any kind of pressure. At the heart of yoga lies the understanding that each person alive contains a seed of the divine, and is infinitely precious. We feel the same, and we treat each woman who comes through our doors as such.

The way we use yoga is as a key for carefully unlocking the bonds and chains that have shackled a woman to her misery. From our own experiences and our years working with women to recover, we know the special combination of softness and firmness that is required, to be strict in banishing addiction or self-destruction, and yet loving and encouraging to the human heart.

In each of our programs, we hold group yoga classes, meditation, and breath work, with options for individual yoga therapy in one-on-one sessions. In addition, yoga deeply informs our approach to coaching lifestyle changes in mindfulness, sleep, diet, and exercise. We rely on the insights of yoga to help women learn to re-pattern their hearts and minds to more connected, healthy thoughts and emotions.

We invite you to read more about how we use yoga as part of our program for achieving sustainable recovery.

So many of us are looking for peace of mind, to feel better in our bodies, and to have deeper emotional resonance within the structures of our lives – yoga is a way to find these things.

Villa Kali Ma Acknowledges National Yoga Month

Without yoga, Villa Kali Ma wouldn’t be here! As our founder Kay shares in her story, yoga can save a person’s life. If yours needs saving, too, come check us out, sister.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193654

Tags national yoga month

Mental Health

September is World Suicide Prevention Month

Post author By VKM
Post date September 8, 2024

What is World Suicide Prevention Month?

As anyone who has been touched by suicide knows, death by self-harm creates enormous trauma in the lives of surviving loved ones, friends, and even casual acquaintances. The fabric of human life is torn for generations whenever any violent death takes place, and suicide is one of the worst ways of bringing harm to our collective heart.

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States and around the globe, as many heartbroken humans succumb to the supreme tragedy of severe isolation and despair that gives rise to thoughts of ending one’s life.

To be clear, there is no shame to be applied to such individuals, as anyone who has been there knows that the kind of extreme torment suffered by people longing to die isn’t easily judged away. At the same time, it can’t be glorified or glamorized away, either, as though there is anything noble in it because there isn’t anything wholesome about killing anyone, especially oneself.

This September, we at Villa Kali Ma invite you to honor World Suicide Prevention Month together with us. World Suicide Prevention Month is an awareness campaign observed every September, in hopes of strengthening collective commitment to preventing suicide.

To Villa Kali Ma’s mind, suicide is the result of extreme disconnection from one’s own life source, sense of value, and meaning. Addiction can and often does lead to suicide, as do the soul-fragmenting impacts of serious trauma. Several forms of mental illness are linked to self-harm as well.

Through our holistic programs for women, we are committed and devoted to helping to heal these epidemic ills through our daily work.

Why is World Suicide Prevention Month important?

Like addiction, suicide is no respecter of class, race, or any other lines and categories we draw between people in our minds. Suicide can touch any human through its signature mechanism of intense, intolerable pain of the heart and mind.

Although patterns of suffering and trauma run in families and across generational lines in intricate ways, what all suicidal people have in common is a loss of hope and a severe disconnection from their own love.

When the fire of a person’s spirit has gone out, it is important to understand that through contact and connection, the fire can be lit again. When we understand how critical each human life is to the rest of us – how we are all puzzle pieces of a picture that cannot be completed without each person’s contribution – we might remember it is in our own interest to make sure less of us fall through the cracks.

Statistics on women and suicide

According to an analysis of suicide statistics collected from 2001 to 2021, conducted by public health researcher Preeti Vankar, suicide is most common among women ages 45 to 64.

In 2020, 8 in every 100,000 women between the ages of 45 and 54 committed suicide. Although women are three times less likely than men to commit suicide, the rate of women attempting suicide has gradually increased over the last two decades.

According to a study of suicide rates across races and ethnicities published by the CDC by way of the National Center for Health Statistics, suicide rates increased between 1999 and 2017 for all race and ethnicity groups, with non-Hispanic white women showing the greatest rise in rate of suicide among females. Women’s suicide tends to be less violent (less likely to involve firearms than men), as women are more likely to try death by self-asphyxiation or poisoning.

Although completion of a suicide attempt is more common among men, women are more likely than men to experience suicidal thoughts and perform suicidal gestures. Women who suffer from addiction are more likely to experience suicidal ideation, or serious thoughts of suicide, and to attempt to take their own lives.

It is exceptionally important to acknowledge the significantly elevated suicide risk among women who are suffering from addiction, mental illness, and traumatization. Women with these conditions are vulnerable and need protection and support.

What are some facts about suicide?

Suicide is defined as death due to purposeful self-injury with the conscious intention to die. An accidental death by overdose or as a result of self-destructive behavior is not, strictly speaking, considered a suicide in the same way.

Not all efforts to end one’s own life succeed; some remain as suicide attempts. A suicide attempt means that someone intended genuinely to take their own life, but they were not successful.

It’s important to understand the degree of seriousness behind an attempt, as some expressions of self-harm are meant as ways of crying out for help, whereas others are more serious attempts to die. When a person has a serious intention to die, they will likely try again and must be protected and supported in greater measure.

People who have experienced other kinds of violence, including sexual violence, bullying, and child abuse, are more likely to attempt to commit suicide.

According to statistics presented by the CDC, suicide rates increased by around a third between 2000 and 2022. In 2022 alone, almost 50,000 Americans died by suicide, and the estimate for those experiencing suicidal thoughts was 13 million. Almost 4 million people planned a suicide attempt, and more than 1 million people attempted suicide but did not die.

The importance of taking care of your mental health

With statistics like these, we cannot afford to ignore the positive effects of proactively caring for mental health and all that that entails. While at large as a culture we have dismissed the stirrings of the soul, emotions, and the need for connection as secondary to productivity and external markers of success, our inner lives cannot be ignored without cost to all of us.

Therefore, in honor of World Suicide Prevention Month, we here at Villa Kali Ma invite you to consider how, when you take good care of your own mental health, including your soul, spirit, and physical body, you are helping the whole collective to learn how to have greater care for all of mankind.

When we have good mental health, we enjoy the following protective factors:

Greater Resilience

Self-Esteem

Positive, Healthy Relationships

Balanced Quality of Life

Greater Sense of Purpose and Calling

Career Success and Personal Productivity

More frequent experiences of Joy and Inspiration

What are some reasons you can think of, to practice good mental health habits?

Here are some thoughts of ours:

When we fill ourselves up with love, self-care, healthy boundaries, and positive thoughts, we have a wellspring of soothing, hopeful, honoring energy to share with others
When we honor the life inside ourselves unconditionally, whether we meet externally imposed standards of success or not, we promote the practice of loving and including all people, just as they are, no matter what, as part of the family of life
We can live our lives in a way that shows that we value human life and that it is something to cherish and give thanks for. When we treat ourselves and those closest to us as precious, important, irreplaceable beloveds, we are helping the world’s soul remember its own unconditional value.

Depression can lead to suicide

Certain mental health patterns, such as depression and most especially bipolar disorder, are strongly linked to suicide.

It’s important to understand that persistent suicidal thoughts often accompany these conditions. Suicidal thoughts should never be taken as less than very, very serious symptoms. We can only hope that these thoughts are more metaphorical than literal, but we would never want to take that chance and assume that a person won’t one day act on that thought.

Such thoughts cannot be easily batted away when the spirit of a person is eclipsed by depression patterns, which represent a very serious sickness of mind and heart. With compassion, we must understand how a person can become entranced by the voice of suicide when one dances too closely with the dark, as people with these disorders cannot help but do (until they are able to heal from these conditions).

It stands to reason that those who are in intense suffering without a break may find themselves thinking about suicide if only out of desperation and hope that the suffering would end with death. For such people, the goal is to help them have hope and to imagine and see a future.

It is also helpful, if the suffering person has anyone they care about, to realistically understand and consider whom they would harm if they acted on the thoughts and harmed themselves. People who are depressed have an extremely negative image of themselves, in which they imagine that they are so terrible, that no one could love them or get any joy out of their presence. We must help people in this state understand how far off these thoughts are.

Has suicide worsened since COVID-19?

Some reports showed that the impact of what took place between 2020 and 2022 has been to increase the rate of suicide.

Recently some of these claims are refined as more data emerges. The current view shared by the National Institute of Mental Health says rather that the increase in suicide rates affects teenagers, but that other categories remained stable.

In general, researchers will learn more over time, and current data could be interpreted in different ways.

How can you get involved in Suicide Prevention Month?

This September, think creatively about how you might support all people to know that their lives are valuable, meaningful, and necessary in this world. Here are some ideas for ways to honor the spirit of the month.

1. Tell your people you love them

Make sure everyone around you knows how much you value them, unconditionally. Not only for what they do for you but for who they are.

2. Offer to hold space for someone

Everyone can use a little compassionate witnessing. If you sense someone in your life may be going through a hard time, offer to sit and listen to them, without offering advice or trying to fix it. Help them feel safe to share the truth of what they’re going through by modeling an attitude of peace and non-judgment.

3. Share your own experiences

If you have any experience with depression and suicidal thoughts, talk to people openly about how you got out of that particular spell. What was the cure that your spirit gave you, for this particular poison? How did it show up in your life? What actions did you need to take? Who helped you?

4. Give Thanks to the People Who Help You Feel Valued

If there are people in your life who help take care of you, and help you feel connected and important just as you are, make sure these people know that you feel and appreciate their love. Shine a light on the ways that they are helping to hold you in this world, connected and secure in the strands of the web of life.

Our individual therapy program can assist women thinking of suicide and self-harm

At Villa Kali Ma, we offer several paths of healing that all lead to the same place – a full and total reconnection to life.

One way we help women get there is through our individual therapy program, which is integrated into each of our programs for substance abuse, mental illness, and trauma.

Read more about how we protect and promote women’s well-being through individual therapy sessions.

Villa Kali Ma Cares About Women’s Mental Health

Women are at the heart and core of Villa Kali Ma. We offer addiction and mental health recovery programs to heal women from substance abuse, trauma, and mental health problems, including depression.

In our integrative sustainable recovery programs, we guide women to discover their inherent, eternal value, and teach them how to live in joy and self-love. From abiding awareness of one’s own lovability, self-harm becomes impossible.

References:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114127/female-suicide-rate-in-the-us-by-age-group/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2017.htm
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1130500/suicide-thoughts-plans-attempts-women-us-by-substance-use-disorder/
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html#cdcreference_3
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2023/youth-suicide-rates-increased-during-the-covid-19-pandemic
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331016/

Tags 2024 national suicide, prevention month, suicide awareness month 2024, suicide prevention month

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